WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.200 --> 00:00:03.158 Hello and welcome to No Effort November, 00:00:03.158 --> 00:00:05.297 a series [rushed mumbling] 00:00:05.297 --> 00:00:09.550 Gonna be lots of flickering lights throughout this video, fyi. 00:00:09.550 --> 00:00:10.345 This, 00:00:10.345 --> 00:00:11.289 [click] 00:00:11.289 --> 00:00:18.371 if not the weirdest light bulb ever made, is certainly the wildest light bulb ever made. 00:00:18.371 --> 00:00:27.748 It’s called the Balafire and just in case a quick glance at the box isn’t clear enough, it’s a product of the late 1960’s and early seventies. 00:00:27.748 --> 00:00:31.292 This novelty light bulb was produced by Kyp-Go Incorporated, 00:00:31.360 --> 00:00:33.922 the company founded by Bob Kyp. 00:00:33.922 --> 00:00:37.446 He was dedicated to the preservation of carbon filament light bulbs 00:00:37.446 --> 00:00:48.222 and in 1950 founded his company (right here in the Chicago area, as it happens) which manufactured reproductions of various antique light bulb designs. 00:00:48.222 --> 00:00:51.930 But in 1964, he had an idea. 00:00:51.930 --> 00:00:53.517 And it wasn’t this. 00:00:53.517 --> 00:00:54.868 It was this! 00:00:54.868 --> 00:01:04.361 This bulb, called the Gas Glo, was an attempt to produce a realistic flame effect for old-looking but still electric light fixtures. 00:01:04.361 --> 00:01:06.904 I’ve long had a soft-spot for this sort of thing - 00:01:06.904 --> 00:01:11.039 you may recall I covered neon flicker flame lamps in the past. 00:01:11.039 --> 00:01:17.005 While they’re really not useful for any  amount of illumination and the flame effect is... 00:01:17.005 --> 00:01:21.181 uh, not terribly realistic it’s still a neat idea. 00:01:21.181 --> 00:01:25.707 These days, since LEDs and microcontrollers are so stinking cheap 00:01:25.707 --> 00:01:31.546 these new light bulbs are gaining in popularity which are… 00:01:31.546 --> 00:01:33.228 well they’re something. 00:01:33.228 --> 00:01:40.545 I don’t love them - these aren’t warm white diodes, they’re amber, so they create terribly unpleasant lighting, 00:01:40.545 --> 00:01:48.108 plus you can usually notice a pattern in their behavior pretty quickly, so I think there’s lots of room for improvement. 00:01:48.108 --> 00:01:54.066 I probably have unrealistically high standards,  though, since growing up and visiting the Disney parks 00:01:54.066 --> 00:02:00.423 I was entranced by how they managed to make  antique lanterns look like there was actually a flame in there. 00:02:00.423 --> 00:02:08.636 I even tracked down a product called SimFlame which is a thing - if not the thing - which makes that particular magic happen. 00:02:08.636 --> 00:02:12.364 This is a plug-in version of the SimFlame 00:02:12.364 --> 00:02:20.269 and really all it is is a fancy dimmer switch which  randomly and subtly changes the brightness of an incandescent light bulb. 00:02:20.269 --> 00:02:25.040 Incandescent filaments offer a natural shift in color emperature as they dim down 00:02:25.040 --> 00:02:33.602 so if you simply frost the glass of a light fixture so you can’t see the actual light bulb, it’s a very convincing effect. 00:02:33.602 --> 00:02:37.849 Jerry’s Electronics is still around and you can still order these if you like, 00:02:37.849 --> 00:02:43.185 in fact they’ve been updated to support LED light bulbs, and I put a link in the doobly-do. 00:02:43.185 --> 00:02:48.365 Though, as I later discovered when I started getting into actual hurricane lanterns, 00:02:48.365 --> 00:02:54.847 this effect isn’t actually representative of the  sort of light output a burning oil lamp creates. 00:02:54.847 --> 00:02:58.028 This, though, it actually is. 00:02:58.028 --> 00:03:05.123 The flicker of an oil lamp is quite subtle and, well, this light bulb has a very subtle flicker. 00:03:05.123 --> 00:03:11.289 It also produces about as much light with the same character that a real oil lamp does. 00:03:11.289 --> 00:03:13.553 And how is it doing that? 00:03:13.553 --> 00:03:21.339 Well, through the magic of buying two of them, I have this clear version of the same bulb which lets us look inside. 00:03:21.339 --> 00:03:25.486 Before I switch it on, and this is going to be very hard to see but hopefully you can, 00:03:25.486 --> 00:03:33.405 you’ll notice the filament is very long and is sticking up into the point of the vaguely flame-shaped glass bulb. 00:03:33.405 --> 00:03:36.463 And it’s free to move around a little bit. 00:03:36.463 --> 00:03:44.554 What I’m sure you have noticed is the weird black chunk of something on a stick, positioned right in the middle of the filament. 00:03:44.554 --> 00:03:46.324 That is a magnet. 00:03:46.324 --> 00:03:48.234 Just a simple magnet. 00:03:48.234 --> 00:03:53.909 Now, you may know that when current flows through a wire it generates a magnetic field. 00:03:53.909 --> 00:03:59.545 And the filament in this light bulb is a wire which will have current flowing through it. 00:03:59.545 --> 00:04:03.263 So once we switch it on, the filament will create a magnetic field 00:04:03.263 --> 00:04:11.203 which will interact with the magnet and create an attractive or a repulsive force which moves the filament relative to the magnet. 00:04:11.203 --> 00:04:20.996 But because the electricity that powers stuff in your home is alternating current,  where the direction of current flow is constantly reversing 50 or 60 times per second, 00:04:20.996 --> 00:04:25.544 the direction the filament will move will constantly reverse. 00:04:25.640 --> 00:04:27.787 And that produces this effect. 00:04:27.787 --> 00:04:33.195 The filament is essentially vibrating thanks to the magnet and alternating current. 00:04:33.195 --> 00:04:38.322 The shape of the bulb restricts the filament’s movement to just a small back and forth motion - 00:04:38.322 --> 00:04:42.311 you can actually hear the filament hitting the glass if you listen real close. 00:04:42.311 --> 00:04:43.706 [faint tinkling] 00:04:43.706 --> 00:04:47.153 And while the effect is pretty tiny, it’s significant. 00:04:47.153 --> 00:04:53.812 The source of the light is physically moving and so, even though the filament is not changing in brightness, 00:04:53.812 --> 00:05:00.022 the amount of light which leaves the bulb in any given direction is always just a little different. 00:05:00.022 --> 00:05:06.909 Even staring directly at this clear bulb, it does kind of look like there’s an actual flame in there. 00:05:06.909 --> 00:05:09.934 And the frosted bulb makes the effect… 00:05:09.934 --> 00:05:19.419 well I won’t say more convincing but it changes the character of the effect in a useful and pleasing way depending on what sort of light fixture you’re sticking it in. 00:05:19.419 --> 00:05:24.929 But then, in 1968, Bob decided to let things loosen up a bit. 00:05:24.929 --> 00:05:33.071 The Balafire bulb is basically the same thing as the Gas Glo bulbs - it even has the same roughly flame-shaped filament. 00:05:33.071 --> 00:05:39.284 But the matching flame shape of the glass envelope was swapped for a simple spherical globe. 00:05:39.284 --> 00:05:43.769 While the Gas Glo bulb physically prevents the filament from moving very far, 00:05:43.769 --> 00:05:48.543 the globe of the Balafire is large enough that the filament can never touch it. 00:05:48.543 --> 00:05:50.515 And the result… 00:05:50.515 --> 00:05:51.777 is that. 00:05:51.777 --> 00:05:57.550 An absolutely wild light bulb where the filament is just flying all over the place. 00:05:57.550 --> 00:06:04.241 It really does look quite a lot like a small fire inside of that light bulb,  and they came in several different colors. 00:06:04.241 --> 00:06:10.228 This really is a mesmerizing effect and you really lose quite a lot of time just staring at one of these, 00:06:10.228 --> 00:06:15.693 especially if under the influence of the sort of substances that the box design might remind you of. 00:06:15.693 --> 00:06:25.022 I have this, of course, just in a standard lamp socket but these were often displayed in fixtures specially designed specifically to display them. 00:06:25.022 --> 00:06:29.715 They might take the form of a mirrored  box to let you see the lamp from all sides, 00:06:29.715 --> 00:06:38.428 and some pretty groovy acrylic cuboids  were out there which fit a globe lamp just perfectly and served as a sort of… 00:06:38.428 --> 00:06:39.886 shrine? 00:06:39.886 --> 00:06:42.108 I dunno, I’m not old enough to have been there. 00:06:42.108 --> 00:06:44.273 And speaking of mirrored [clicks off] 00:06:44.273 --> 00:06:47.742 you might have noticed that the glass is somewhat mirrored. 00:06:47.742 --> 00:06:53.804 While I can’t say for sure, I have a hunch that this was  done in part to hide the fact that what’s inside this 00:06:53.804 --> 00:06:58.376 is literally the same exact thing as the Gas Glo bulb. 00:06:58.376 --> 00:07:03.343 If you could see clearly into the bulb, it would look identical. 00:07:03.343 --> 00:07:12.110 Then again, it also just looks pretty cool and a lot more interesting when it’s shut off than a simple red light bulb so maybe I’m just being too cynical there. 00:07:12.110 --> 00:07:13.250 You tell me. 00:07:13.250 --> 00:07:23.371 The box claims these light bulbs had a life of 500 hours which seems quite pessimistic for a lamp which is burning the filament at such a dull brightness 00:07:23.371 --> 00:07:30.297 until you remember that the tiny, fragile filament is flying around every which way with gusto. 00:07:30.297 --> 00:07:32.524 Ever heard of metal fatigue? 00:07:32.524 --> 00:07:36.362 This is both really cool to watch and really painful! 00:07:36.362 --> 00:07:39.675 That’s not good for the health of the filament, 00:07:39.675 --> 00:07:44.068 though for what it’s worth the patent mentions that an aged filament 00:07:44.068 --> 00:07:51.541 (one which has already been subjected to higher-than-normal voltage and thus had a burn-in period) is preferred. 00:07:51.640 --> 00:07:55.560 I’m sure that helped keep these  things from burning out too early. 00:07:55.560 --> 00:08:03.380 Then again, I found some forum posts about these where someone claimed they had used theirs for many thousands of hours. 00:08:03.380 --> 00:08:10.595 Certainly if the filament is being driven as gently as it is in the Gas Glo bulb that’s not outside the realm of possibility - 00:08:10.595 --> 00:08:15.908 that’s quite dim and evaporation of tungsten is going to be very, very slow. 00:08:15.908 --> 00:08:22.942 But it relies on getting very lucky as far as how sturdy the filament was in your particular bulb. 00:08:22.942 --> 00:08:31.611 These don’t “burn out” in the traditional sense where a weak spot forms after hundreds of hours of pushing tungsten almost to its melting point, 00:08:31.611 --> 00:08:35.873 instead the filament just mechanically fails at some point. 00:08:35.873 --> 00:08:38.965 And, well, that’s really all I've got for you today. 00:08:38.965 --> 00:08:41.778 Just a couple of weird old light bulbs. 00:08:41.778 --> 00:08:52.091 Bob Kyp passed away in 2011, but shortly before he died Kyp-Go started up a new run of these using standard A19-shaped light bulbs. 00:08:52.091 --> 00:08:55.214 I’m assuming there was a logistical or technical reason for that - 00:08:55.214 --> 00:09:03.158 the mirrored red sphere looks so much cooler than just a normal light bulb and I would think they would have wanted to do that again if they could have - 00:09:03.158 --> 00:09:06.105 but it was still nice that it was revived. 00:09:06.105 --> 00:09:11.415 Now, these are collectors items and are worth around $100 each. 00:09:11.415 --> 00:09:17.289 I believe Kyp-Go is now defunct, I only found a web presence via the Wayback Machine. 00:09:17.289 --> 00:09:23.710 But I was genuinely delighted to learn that there actually was a Disney Parks connection this whole time - 00:09:23.710 --> 00:09:31.584 apparently Kyp-Go was who was making the antique carbon filament bulbs in use in the theme parks and certain attractions. 00:09:31.584 --> 00:09:35.337 Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my channel icon. 00:09:35.337 --> 00:09:46.481 That is a photograph of a FerroWatt bulb - one of the newer companies who got into the reproduction “Edison” bulb trend long before it exploded into what it is now. 00:09:46.481 --> 00:09:47.927 Or maybe what it was a decade ago. 00:09:47.927 --> 00:09:49.657 I don’t remember when it peaked. 00:09:49.657 --> 00:09:52.856 Anyway, it looks like they, too, are defunct. 00:09:52.856 --> 00:09:56.366 Which is kinda sad, they had some of the best reproductions. 00:09:56.366 --> 00:09:58.981 Including a glass-tip. 00:09:58.981 --> 00:10:10.011 For what it’s worth, though, most of those so-called “carbon filament” reproductions  were and still are, as far as I know, just tungsten filaments being run very gently. 00:10:10.011 --> 00:10:15.215 And that means they tend to last a lot longer than they seem like they should - 00:10:15.215 --> 00:10:19.890 it’s like being permanently on a dimmer set quite low. 00:10:19.890 --> 00:10:27.817 However, they’re horribly inefficient and produce an  extremely warm light and so while they are nice in a few decorative spots, 00:10:27.817 --> 00:10:31.964 they’re not great at all for general illumination. 00:10:31.964 --> 00:10:33.267 Uh, but anyway, the end. 00:10:34.069 --> 00:10:36.596 ♫ wildly smooth jazz ♫ 00:10:37.401 --> 00:10:40.987 …for old-looking but still electric light bulbs. 00:10:40.987 --> 00:10:42.519 Light fixtures! 00:10:42.519 --> 00:10:43.802 [clears throat] 00:10:43.802 --> 00:10:49.696 I don’t love them, these aren’t warm white diodes, they’re amber so they create… terr… 00:10:49.696 --> 00:10:50.844 ohf shoot. 00:10:50.844 --> 00:10:54.632 …thing if not the thing which makes that par… crap. 00:10:55.660 --> 00:11:01.395 I have this of course just in a standard lamp socket just inst… ffthwhat? 00:11:01.395 --> 00:11:05.243 But I was genuinely telighted to lear - ahhhhhh 00:11:05.523 --> 00:11:07.978 Yeah, we’re gonna be done by the end of the day! 00:11:08.605 --> 00:11:09.186 Oh, 00:11:10.807 --> 00:11:16.387 that reminds me because this one was so short I dunno how many bloopers there are going to be. 00:11:16.387 --> 00:11:19.277 There were a few, uh but I’m just recording this section 00:11:19.277 --> 00:11:22.134 in case I have to pad it  out into the point where I normal cu- 00:11:24.313 --> 00:11:28.171 that's some movie magic for ya. 00:11:28.171 --> 00:11:32.168 cutting right when i said cut. 00:11:32.168 --> 00:11:35.684 i'm so clever makin' funnies like that